Snowdrop poem: Canalside Encounters

Canalside Encounters

When she sees the tiger she stops, frozen.
The beast is a shape of shadows curled
across the track, a camoflage of stipples
and two-tone stripes stacked to an eye
wide to refract the world around.

"Old Tom, he said he saw a cat
at play this morning, sheep in jaws.
I told him: 'Nonsense, man!' But here
she lies, as wide as bulls at must
and not a jot of fear in her.
Now I know cats, and if this one's
as full of mutton like he claimed
then it's no threat to you nor me.
You let me walk ahead, my girl;
I have no fear of death by claws."

As the woman bustles her way around her,
Snowdrop reaches to snatch at her shoulder,
suddenly ashamed of her stalling fear.
She misses her target: the Mistress is quick
on her feet, and eager to end her adventures
in this terse, ungracious, graceless future.

"You come now, kitty: hear my words.
My lady has to pass this way
for she has business to attend --
she has a world to fix, so shift
your paws and curb your meowl
and let us by. We have a hill to climb!"

... and the tiger stands! Slowly, she moves,
taking her time to test the stretch
of each of her shanks, and arches her back
and steps to the side, snuffling at ices
that snap beneath the set of her paws.

She doesn't wait for the woman to beckon
her forwards. She keeps the force of her gaze
on the canal waters that clatter and scatter
in their trammeled course; she trusts her ears
to anticipate fangs. A touch of fur
levers a scream from her lungs, choked
by her throat before it flees to the gale
that batters about her. She braves a glance.
The tiger's stare is steady, unblinking,
a test of acceptance: a truce, of sorts.

"Sweet Mary, womb to Jesus Christ!
I've never seen the likes before:
this beast has plans to walk with us
it seems, and you to guide it, child.
I see behind us others come;
they fight the winds to claim a place
with you -- the hoodeners, poor sods,
that gentleman who talks too posh
and up ahead I see a flame
astride the barks of Jenny Twig ...
lead on, my Lady: bring us home!"

Snowdrop poem: Sundown

Sundown

In the lea of the broad canal,
its surface chopped to tesselates,
five head-low swans, beak on beak,
ruffed and clumped like a bride.

A fox snouts aside a percussion
of dead leaves, chances his eyes
on threshing bramble thorns, blunts
claws on hard clods, chases worms.

When the copper sun's last arc sinks
a woody crack rifles over lawns:
a sycamore bough fails; twigs tangle
like hand-grasps as the limb falls.

A burr of fur sits tight in an angle
of bricks, eyes wide and round. Wind
paddles her ears flat to her head;
she mewls for tall, warm interventions.

In the air, an edge of a giant
forms and fails, reforms: tatters
of papers and plastics swirl as shanks
as it strides away from the town.

Snowdrop: Beneath St Leonard's Church (with added AV)

Beneath St Leonard’s Church

The church clings to the cliff like a limpet
stamped on its rock by the deserting tide;
a lash of gale grapples the branches
of surrounding trees to reenact
a batter of waves on abandoned wharves.

Flexing her waist, she forces a course
to haven – the steps of the stony porch
and a warmth of hymns whispering beyond
the half-opened oaken threshhold.

Safe from the storm, she struts her hands
to her shaking knees, shivers and hauls
wafts of incence and waxy smokes
into her lungs laced in their ribs.
The choir pauses as her pulse calms.

"They sing of Christmas, each in their stall, and call
on all good people: witness hope and joy
for God is born in Bethlehem, a boy
whose flesh was sent to heal the world, our fall
from Eden’s grace forgiven, if we let
his promises take root deep in our hearts."

When she tightens the sash of her stolen coat
she decides against the sacred echoes
of the vicar’s chants, chooses instead
the dark enticements of a door to her right
that leads her earthwards, to the ancestors' lair.

"But all I see are bones and skulls, their arts
no more than layered deaths, a coronet
of jaws, a weave of joints now set amidst
these puckered arches carved by ancient minds
whose skulls sit still on shelves. There must be more
than this … the song that leaves a throat is fixed
not by the ear, but more a hope that binds
our bones to yearn for greater, safer shores."

Snowdrop poem: Beneath St Leonard's Church

There's gonna be some AV scattered between these lines, but here's the sonnety bit:

Beneath St Leonard's Church

They sing of Christmas, each in their stall, and call
on all good people: witness hope and joy
for God is born in Bethlehem, a boy
whose flesh was sent to heal the world, our fall
from Eden's grace forgiven, if we let
his promises take root deep in our hearts.
But all I see are bones and skulls, their arts
no more than layered deaths, a coronet
of jaws, a weave of joints now set amidst
these puckered arches carved by ancient minds
whose skulls sit still on shelves. There must be more
than this … the song that leaves a throat is fixed
not by the ear, but more a hope that binds
our bones to yearn for greater, safer shores.

Snowdrop poem: A Queen Laments

Slowly I work my way towards an end to this interminable poem ...

A Queen Laments

"Look at you: the girl who destroyed the magic
mists and caused the sun to erupt unblooded.
Seasons stall! No spring shall unfold from winter,
singing salvation.

"Hear the bells! They toll for the death of nations.
We who sought the shelter of timeless havens
watched you rip our spells from their tight foundation –
sinful salvation.

"Who will tend my woods now that I am ousted?
Bough and brook will fester, my meadows poisoned …
bricks and roads shall blossom in place of trees: who
sings for salvation?

"You can fix this, child, for you have the power.
End this pointless agony swiftly: finish
what you triggered painlessly – give us sweet and
simple salvation."

Snowdrop poem: Tom Beak Seeks a Boon (with AV)

I've added in the AV lines that go between each of the Sailor's strophes ...

Tom Beak Seeks a Boon

He finds her walking westwards, as lost
as the thrusts and gusts of the threatening storm.
He pulls on her coat to catch her attention.

"I cannot deny it; you'll not disagree:
you look as confused as a wherry at sea,
no trust for your compass, its nonsense a moil
of spins and seductions enough to embroil
a heart in a tavern of doxies and pox."

She can feel the crusts of his calloused fingers
as she clasps it between her cold-blanched palms
and steers him through a surf of shoppers.

"Now please understand me; I don't mean to mock:
this morning you gave me the greatest of gifts –
a sunrise so golden it cast me adrift!
I walked with a shadow across these old lands
and stood on that high wall to marvel at sands
recast by each tide into berms and lagoons:
I ran and I danced like a crippled buffoon
and mewled as a kitten when tasting the grits
of salt in the breeze – you've unstoppered my wits …"

The High Street tacks like the twisted hawse
of anchor cables caught in the ebb.
A slant of sunlight stipples the road
as they arc across the icy cobbles.

"… and still I am lost. Each new step that I take,
each wonder my eyes fall upon makes me quake –
it breaks me, it smacks on my bones like a boar
at rut, for the world that I loved is no more."

They stop at the foot of a staircase alley
that offers escape from the scope of traders;
a murder of tinsels mirrors from his eyes
as their gazes lock through the gauze of centuries.

"I beg you to listen, my Lady. My feats
are ending; the log of my life is replete
with parables fit for a king's history …
and now I must tackle one last mystery.
I ache for the comfort of coffins, I crave
the bliss of unbreachable sleep in my grave
and you are the one who can help me achieve
my final desire to complete this shore leave."

Snowdrop poem: Time Neverbeen

Time Neverbeen

I see a girl I know; I recognise
her sneer, her shout, the stamp of her sure pride –
I want to call her name, but there beside
her stands a kid, a boy so close in size
and looks to her, his hair and chin and ear.
And she's so old! A dozen years perhaps
has sliced across her face, her skin collapsed
about a furrowed neck: what's happened here?
I knew her yesterday, but overnight
a history of hopes and fears has slapped
dreams from her eyes. For her tomorrow came
and tolled her strength, slumping her bones; a blight
of time and memories – will I be trapped
like her? A bright mind in its fatal frame?

Snowdrop poem: Tom Beak Seeks a Boon

Tom Beak Seeks a Boon

I cannot deny it; you'll not disagree:
you look as confused as a wherry at sea,
no trust for your compass, its nonsense a moil
of spins and seductions enough to embroil
a heart in a tavern of doxies and pox.

Now please understand me; I don't mean to mock:
this morning you gave me the greatest of gifts –
a sunrise so golden it cast me adrift!
I walked with a shadow across these old lands
and stood on that high wall to marvel at sands
recast by each tide into berms and lagoons:
I ran and I danced like a crippled buffoon
and mewled as a kitten when tasting the grits
of salt in the breeze – you've unstoppered my wits

… and still I am lost. Each new step that I take,
each wonder my eyes fall upon makes me quake –
it breaks me, it smacks on my bones like a boar
at rut, for the world that I loved is no more.

I beg you to listen, my lady. My feats
are ending; the log of my life is replete
with parables fit for a king's history …
and now I must tackle one last mystery.
I ache for the comfort of coffins, I crave
the bliss of unbreachable sleep in my grave
and you are the one who can help me achieve
my final desire to complete this shore leave.

In which Rik doesn't do NaPoWriMo 2012

That's right. After seven years of attempting (and usually failing to complete) the annual NaPoWriMo challenge, I'm giving the madness a miss this year.

Instead, I've set myself another task: to finish, and publish, Snowdrop before Christmas 2012. Because the poem needs to be finished - it deserves to be finished. And the only way I am going to finish it is by working (and reworking) it until it begs to be put out of its misery through publication.

The task shouldn't be too difficult. Most of the poem is already edited to my satisfaction, with only a few poems to rework, and 7 or 8 more new poems to draft and edit. After which I can have some fun with footnotes and endnotes before releasing the whole piece into the wilds, where it will stand or fall on its merits.

I have no plans to tackle another long poem like this ever again. So it's up to me to make this one good. So no time-wasting for Rik; no dodgy doggerel or limp limericks this April: proper work needs to be done!